AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

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Monday, July 25, 2011

In his column today, Murdoch journalist Andrew Bolt defends the creed of hate that motivated the killing of more than 90 people in Norway.

In his article, which he titles ‘Look not at his creed but at his wounds’, Bolt attempts to excuse the actions of Breivik by portraying him as being deeply frustrated by a sense of “powerlessness” which Bolt suggests is bought on by being engulfed by Islam, and “rejection” because of coming from a broken family.

While Bolt has used various superlatives to describe what Breivik had done including ‘murder’ and ‘atrocity’, etc., Bolt has consistently failed to wholeheartedly condemn the crime or the ‘creed’ that motivated it.

Fortunately, apart from a few of Bolt’s regular far-right Islamophobic supporters, most comments, even from some who often support Bolt, are critical of him for taking this stance.

After a careful read of Bolt’s post one can only conclude that Bolt is actually supportive of the reason why Breivik committed this crime. Certainly Andrew Bolt and his Islamophobic supporters in Australia are on exactly the same wavelength as Breivik. It was only a matter of time before Bolt's influence manifested itself in this type of violence.We have Murdoch to thank for the part Bolt has played in bringing the kind of hate-filled thinking Breivik has displayed to Australia.

Murdoch should immediately sack this hate-monger before his Islamophobic nonsense gains a foothold in Australia and culminates in the same kind of tragedy that happened in Norway.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Whereas in Britain Murdoch’s journalists revel in tabloid sensationalism utilising various nefarious methods of gaining material for their non-stories, Murdoch’s Australian journalists tend more to specialise in ultra right-wing racism. This includes cultural and religious racism directed mainly toward Islam, as well as blood and colour racism which is directed particularly toward Australia’s own Aboriginal people and also toward black Africans that have sought refuge in Australia.

Meanwhile, at Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper, The Telegraph, another ultra right-wing blogger-columnist, Tim Blair, showed his Islamophobic colours when he made the same knee-jerk call as Bolt when the Norwegian atrocity story broke; he blamed Muslims.

The propaganda at Murdoch’s – and Australia’s – only national newspaper, The Australian, is only marginally more sophisticated than his regional tabloids. Greg Sheridan, Dennis Shanahan and Janet Albrechtsen, the Ann Coulter of the Australian loony right, are among the most prominent racist ultra right-wingers that Murdoch employs. Naturally, they all also happen to be climate change denialists and supporters of pollutionists. Currently, most of them are busy trying to isolate Murdoch’s Australian propaganda machine from the fallout from the misdeeds of his UK propaganda machine.

The aims of the two arms of his propaganda empire, the UK and Australia, are the same; its just that the UK arm tends more toward using underhand means of pushing their message while the Australian arm uses blatant fear-mongering racism and lies about climate change to get to its objectives of ‘regime change’ in Australia.

Murdoch’s merchants of hate in Australia have played down the events that occurred in Norway two days ago. Few have condemned the atrocity and have only reported the facts. Nor have Murdoch’s propagandists properly condemned the reactionary violence against African immigrants by racist white youths who clearly have been influenced by the likes of Murdoch’s Australian propagandists.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Murdoch journalist and extreme right-wing Australian racist, Andrew Bolt, is always quick to condemn Islamic terrorism wherever it may occur. Of course, all terrorism needs to be condemned but for Bolt, such condemnation is also seen as an opportunity to push his hate spiel against Islam for his racist followers to feed on.

Well, the identity of the attackers did become known and it seems at least one of them, who has been arrested, is actually just like Bolt and his crew of haters – an Islamophobic far-right racist.

Once Bolt realised that the attack had not been perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, he began to report only the bare facts in a series of updates to his original post. All of the updates were noticeably devoid of any condemnation. To date there have been no further posts on the attacks at Bolt’s blog.

This is part of the Murdoch style of journalism in Australia. Whether or not there is phone hacking going on in Australia is as yet unknown, but certainly there is a distinct pattern of anti-Islamic and anti non-white racism running through most of Murdoch’s publications in Australia particularly in Sydney where another Murdoch racist, Tim Blair, operates, and in Melbourne which is Bolt’s hate base.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The climate change debate has caused us to lose sight of the real issue at stake.

The right-wing media that support the polluters are contesting the Greens argument that continued use of the earths non-renewable resources as a fuel will eventually lead to a rise in temperatures that will ultimately see many of the planets low lying areas become engulfed by and lost to rising sea levels. The right-wing media argues simply that this just won’t happen and that there’s no proof to support it. The Greens, in turn, say there is ample proof and that we should take immediate steps to do something about it.

To help the pollutionists argument, the right-wing have arranged an assortment of so-called experts to travel around the planet in an attempt to persuade the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘not convinced’ into their camp. One of the most prolific pro-pollutionist speakers, an ‘expert’ with no formal qualifications in the field, is a certain Lord Christopher Monckton. As part of his rhetoric, Monckton actually claims to be a member of Britain’s House of Lords while knowing that he is not. So serious is the matter that the House of Lords have had to ask Monckton to refrain from claiming that he is a member. ‘Lord’ Monckton, thus, has no credibility yet the pro-pollutionists continue to pay for his services. While there are far more pro-climate change scientists around than there are denialist scientists – most of whom seem to have various vested interests in supporting the pollutionists – the denialist scientists have the support of a massive right-wing media controlled mainly by the now much troubled Murdoch group of companies.

In the pro-polluters camp there are two distinct groups. One group are the polluters themselves who are currently making a lot of money out of polluting and so don’t want to stop polluting; and then there is a second more complex group that support the polluters cause but for their own nefarious reasons. Together they have formed an alliance that is determined to stop the world from stopping the polluters polluting it.

The second group that support the polluters do so only because their primary concern is that they don’t want to have to pay the polluters compensation to stop polluting us which is what some of the world’s governments are proposing. They are also concerned that the polluters will more than likely not stop polluting us and far more likely make even more money by trading in the complex government-sponsored ‘carbon credits’ scheme. They argue simply that a ‘carbon tax’ will cost the planet in jobs and money and do little or nothing to stop climate change – if, indeed, it’s actually changing anyway.

Within the second group there is a small group who think, possibly rightly, that the ‘carbon tax’ is just another government rip off from the ordinary working class world that will achieve nothing except enrich further those that are already rich. This group aren’t so much for the pollutionists but, rather, against the impost of a tax. In nations like Australia where a ‘carbon tax’ is being proposed, this group are politically important because they may well be the group that decide who will next govern Australia because, the way things are going at the moment, the next election could revolve almost entirely around this issue.

My argument, however, is not so much about whether or not there is climate change occurring – I happen to think there is - but more about the future of resources for a world that our children, grand-children and great grand-children will inherit; a future which should concern all of us whether we are believers or not.

Our world is populating at an exponential rate; it has more than tripled in just the last 90 years. Advances in medicine and health care have ensured a generally longer life. Fertility treatment, higher birth survival rates and post-natal care practices also play a part in increasing the world’s population. Although wars, unfortunately, are still a part of human existence on the planet, they are nowhere near as devastating in terms of numbers dead as the wars that dominated the twentieth century and this fact too has increased the planets population. As a result, in 50 years time we can expect a world population of some 10-12 billion people from the 6.93 billion we have now. Providing energy for such large numbers of people from non-renewable resources is likely to deplete the known resources very quickly.

Pro-pollutionists argue that there are still plenty of resources left in the ground that has not yet been discovered. The obvious retort to such an argument is; if it has not yet been discovered, how can anyone say that there's plenty left? While it is true that man has over the past several decades since the Second World War discovered vast deposits of energy resources, we have quickly used much of these up, and the areas where man can now look have been all but exhausted. The pro-pollutionists, however, insist on continuing to search for these resources knowing that the chances of finding them become less likely as each day goes by.

We need to ask ourselves a number of questions; first, are we willing to take a punt on there actually being vast amounts of resources left and, even if there are, how much longer will it last before we need to start another desperate search for more? Second, if we do find the extra reserves the planet needs, are we willing to take a punt on the climate change scientists being wrong by going ahead and burning it in the hope that it will have no ill effects? And when those reserves do run out; what then?

Our planet’s engineers now have the technology to produce energy from solar, lunar and geothermal resources. We can produce power directly from the sun via photo-voltaic (PV) cells, direct radiation on absorber panels (solar hot water systems), wind energy (which comes via the sun heating air masses which causes air to expand and move), and other devices that use mirrors and lenses. We can produce power by harnessing the moon’s gravitational pull on the worlds oceans (tidal and wave power); and we have an abundant source of geothermal power locked up beneath the earths surface which we are only just beginning to understand and use though some countries, like Iceland, have been using geothermal power for years for various applications including heating water and living spaces as well as generating electricity.

For sure, much of this technology is still in its infancy and a lot of research and development still needs to be done before it can be used universally and in enough numbers where a point can be reached that we no longer need to worry about our future energy needs even if we knew there was no more non-renewable resources left to use, but we are moving along fairly rapidly. Just recently there has been a tremendous surge in the use of PV energy generation. PV panels are now the most common form of renewable energy generation used in private homes. Advances in PV efficiency both in terms of power generation and cost have allowed them to become a very practical alternative to ever-increasing power bills for many households. If the PV technology advances follows anything like the way computer technology advanced then we could very quickly see rapid universal use of them everywhere.

Wind power generation has also seen huge advances in use in less than a decade. In South Australia, for example, more than 20% of the states power needs are generated from wind turbines with more on the way. And, again, wind turbine technology is also seeing this form of power generation come into rapidly increasing usage.

Advances in energy storage systems, especially in lithium battery design, is bringing the electric car concept closer to reality. Once the volume-mass problems associated with energy storage systems have been solved, so we will be a step closer to using all-electric transport systems of all types.

We do still have a long way to go but the time it takes to get there can be drastically shortened if the energy providers of the world can be given incentives to increase their research and development to providing renewable energy resources rather than using up what’s left of the worlds non-renewable resources. There is far more at stake here than the loss of a few coalminers jobs or the non-renewable energy providers profits. We need to look forward to a world that doesn’t rely on fuels that will run out; a world where its inhabitants don’t have to fight over the pickings of what reserves are left; a world that stops consuming itself and instead uses what our solar system can provide – abundant energy that will increase the quality of life for everyone on the planet.

The choice is simple. You can have this (above) which the likes of Andrew Bolt, a notorious pro-pollutionist, thinks is a “rotten thing” because, he says, it has ruined one of his “favourite views in Victoria”, or we can have this (below).The so-called ‘carbon tax’, which will pay for the research and development of renewable resources, is a small price to pay, both now and for our future.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ex-Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister, is either nowhere near as bright as he likes to think he is or he is being deliberately deceitful.

Yesterday, while visiting Melbourne, Rudd stopped off at a café in one of Melbourne’s shopping plazas. Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported that his choice of cafe was deliberate. Rudd was quoted as saying: ''As an individual citizen - that is me, K. Rudd - I am here because I object to the boycotting of Jewish businesses”.

If Rudd had said he was there because he objected to the boycotting of Israeli businesses then that would have been fine – but he didn’t. He specifically and deliberately said ‘Jewish’ businesses. It was deliberate because he went on to emphasise the point by saying that “anyone with historical memory should deplore boycotts of Jewish businesses”. Rudd, of course, was referring to the way Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses in Germany during the 1930s.

Rudd’s inference here is quite clear; boycotting Jewish businesses is anti-Semitic – and if the businesses were being boycotted simply because they were Jewish, it would indeed be anti-Semitic.

The problem is; this particular business, a Max Brenner Chocolate Bar, was targeted for boycotting recently by pro-Palestinian activists, not because it was a Jewish-owned business, but because it was an Israeli-owned business. The fact that the business also happens to be Jewish-owned is incidental. There are many Jewish-owned businesses all over Australia and not one of them is being boycotted solely because it is Jewish-owned.

There also happens to be another aspect to this story that Rudd hadn’t considered when setting out to take this action.

Rudd’s attempt at invoking Nazi era anti-Semitism in order to promote Zionism is transparently inappropriate and utterly deceitful – not to mention as in this case, totally misplaced considering that the head of the company that owns the cafe Rudd stopped at effectively supports the right to boycott.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

In his rush to demonise Islam, the racist Islamophobe Andrew Bolt forgets how similar Islam is to Judaism in many of its practices. In his column today he does his usual lazy journalist stunt of cutting and pasting other people’s work to create a post that is totally bereft of any of his own words. In this case he cites fellow Islamophobe Mark Steyn from his blog in order to project his own view.

Basically, the piece attempts to belittle Islam by highlighting the Islamic practice of not allowing menstruating women to worship in their mosque and being made to sit at the back of the place of worship during this time. Bolt and Steyn infer that the practice is both sexist and archaic. Another Islamophobe, Kathy Shaidle, reinforces this notion in her article which Steyn and then Bolt quote: “…and the year is 2011” implying that this sort of practice isn’t appropriate in this day and age.

The problem is that all of these Islamophobes have been so busy trying to demonise Islam in this way that they’ve not realised that some sects within Judaism have very similar laws about menstruating women with some synagogues not even allowing menstruating women into the synagogue let alone make them sit at the back.

All Bolt, Steyn and Shaidle have demonstrated with this piece of attempted hate-spiel is their own hypocrisy and utter ignorance – not to mention their Islamophobic racism and contempt for the Islamic religion. Their hate-spiel goes to the heart of Islamic religious practices, practices which also happen to be shared by other religions, and has absolutely nothing to do with Islamic extremism which they claim is their only objection to Islam.

Freedom of speech is one thing; Bolt’s brand of hate-speech is something else. The quicker this sick racist is shut down the better for Australia and the better for the planet.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Reuel Marc Gerecht is one of neoconservatisms most diehard ideologues. In his latest piece of neocon rhetoric in The Weekly StandardGerecht writes:

“…the uncertainties of the Arab Spring and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war in Libya have spooked the administration. Its ‘realist’ tendencies are well known, and ‘realism’ powerfully comes to the fore when a president doesn’t know what to do​—​or believes that the United States can do little. The safest and easiest bet then is to do nothing​—​the essence of most ‘realist’ policy.

Such ‘prudence’, ‘restraint’, and ‘patience’​—​the administration is fond of these words​—​can be commendable when a situation is messy or murky. But neither applies in Syria. This is an easy call: We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region​—​the linchpin of Iran’s alliances and terrorist apparatus. We have a chance to traumatize Tehran: The world will look a lot more precarious to supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a lot more hopeful to the millions behind Iran’s pro-democracy Green Movement if Bashar al-Assad goes down. The importance of Syria to Iranian foreign policy and internal politics cannot be overstated.”

Now, Gerecht has been around spouting the neocon cause for a very long time and while in his latest article he comes across all concerned about America’s dwindling power, the reality is that his primary concerns are not so much for America but far more for Israel.

Gerecht accuses Obama of either not knowing ‘what to do’ about Syria or believing there is little that can be done. There is another option that Gerecht doesn’t mention but which is far more likely to be the case as far as Obama is concerned and that is it’s simply not practical to go in boots and all as Gerecht would like him to do.

One has to ask oneself; how come Gerecht and all his neocon buddies are so deadset obsessed with Syria and Iran? Neither nation is a threat to America. Gerecht says; “We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region…” but how is Syria an enemy? In what way is it a threat?

What Gerecht really means to say is: “We have a chance to eliminate one of Israel’s worst enemies in the region”. Syria, of course, is an enemy of Israel because Israel invaded, occupied and then annexed Syria’s Golan Heights. Syria also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

And Gerecht’s interest in Israel doesn’t stop at Syria. For Israel the real enemy is Iran. Iran has the weapons to supply to those that are resisting Israel’s expansionist ambitions whereas Syria is the means by which those weapons can be supplied. And it is Iran who Gerecht has been encouraging, not just the US, but Israel to attack regardless of what the consequences might be.

“Israeli calculations for a preventive strike don't have to be conclusive to be successful. If the Israelis do nothing, they know that they would eventually be staring at an internally unstable, virulently anti-Semitic, terrorist-fond regime with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Simply imagining the probable hair-trigger scenarios in which Israel will have to play atomic-bluff with Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps -- the organization that oversees Iran's nuclear program -- ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder.”

“…ought to be enough to make any rational nuclear planner shudder”? Indeed it would, but not in the way Gerecht imagines. Gerecht paints a picture or Iran that is totally unreal. Even if Iran did have a nuclear weapon, it would hardly be likely to use it against Israel. The fact is; Israel just isn’t so important a nation that Iran is ready destroy itself over no matter how much Iran despises Zionism.

The neocons are making a concerted effort to destroy Syria’s Assad regime and wants to get Obama to hasten Assad’s demise, but what the neocons don’t seem to realise is that once Assad is gone there is not suddenly going to be some Israeli-friendly, or even US-friendly government, taking his place. The people of Syria object to Israel taking the Golan Heights and they support the Palestinians and their cause. The revolt against Assad is purely an internal matter No matter how it is ultimately resolved; it is unlikely to change the Syrian people’s view of Israel or even Syria’s support of Hezbollah.

Gerecht and his fellow neocons, as usual, are practising deceit – again. Gerecht is motivated by Israeli interests and not America’s. He just wants the US to do the dirty work for Israel. Surely the American people have woken up to this deceit by now. Look what happened in Iraq. How many Americans died there?

It’s tempting to suggest that the scandal enveloping the Murdoch media empire may well see the demise of the world’s largest political propaganda machine. Unfortunately, the very fact that it is such a massive propaganda machine will likely ensure that his empire does survive – albeit needing some considerable time to recover.

Apart from being a massive world-wide propaganda machine, Murdoch himself wields much personal and political influence. There are many leaders around the world, past and present, who owe much of their success to Murdoch and his media empire. Even the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, arguably, may not have got into power without Murdoch’s backing. And Tony Blair too might not have enjoyed such a large victory at the polls as he did in May 1997 without the last minute support of Rupert Murdoch. In the US, Murdoch’s long string of media enterprises, in particular Fox News, helped George W. Bush gain American support for the war against Iraq. Around the world, Murdoch’s newspapers and media served Bush’s cause and those of his allies including Tony Blair; Australia’s Prime Minister of the time, John Howard; Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar, all of whom benefited from Murdoch’s unwavering support for the war. Aznar even went on to become a senior member of the board of directors for News Corporation.

In the current crisis, Cameron initially supported Murdoch in the hope that it would all be just a flash in the pan and, after a few smaller heads were made to roll, all would be well again. Cameron supported Murdoch’s push to buy up all of Britain’s BSkyB media company but, in the wake of the growing crisis and the now obvious fact that it isn’t simply going to go away, Cameron has now joined the political call from Britain’s other major parties for Murdoch to abandon his plans to take over BSkyB which will be a major blow for Murdoch.

As the crisis deepens and it’s becoming apparent that the practice of phone hacking was far more widespread than initially thought, many are wondering how far the practice did extend and to what extent were senior and top managers aware of what was going on or even approved or, worse still, had instigated the practice. Did Murdoch himself know or approve of it? He’s hardly likely to admit it if he did though if he’s hauled up to front an inquiry and denies it and then is subsequently found to be a part of the practice then that surely would be the end of him.

Whether it comes to the demise of Murdoch himself remains to be seen. Murdoch has enough personal wealth to ensure that he will be very comfortable for the rest of his days; however, doing business is his obsession and he wouldn’t last very long without the fix of doing deals so I’d suggest that he’ll fight this all the way – even if it’s just for the thrill of it. Whether he wins or not is another matter.

In Australia, where it all started for Murdoch, his newspapers are relatively safe. His flagship paper, the nationwide The Australian, has all but ignored the crisis on the other side of the world, as have his regional and city papers. All of them seem to be reporting only the bare facts of what’s happened with very little comment or opinion being aired.

For his rival newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and The Age in Melbourne, it’s a different matter. Both have been giving the emerging stories full headlines though the intensity of reporting and commentary has now dropped off a little – at least for now.

A world without Murdoch’s propagandists in it, however, is still some way away though the next few months will likely see some interesting developments that will see them pull their horns in.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Last week I wrote about how neocons and Zionists don’t understand why the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’. Of course, it’s not really that they don’t understand, it’s more that they would like to continue to use the original reason for having a flotilla in the first place – to bring relief and humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip – for propaganda purposes. They think that if they can show there is no longer a need for humanitarian aid then there is no reason for a flotilla. They now argue that, because they think there is now no need to bring aid to the Gaza, then the flotilla must only be to provoke Israel.

The reality is far from what the Zionists and neocons would like us to believe. First, there is still a need for aid. Despite the sporadic opening of the Gaza-Egypt border and even a slight increase in the amount of goods passing into the Gaza from Israel, there is still nowhere near enough coming in to service all of the Gazan people's needs. As for ‘provoking Israel’, the reality is the complete opposite; it is Israel that is deliberately provoking Hamas.

It’s about time the international media drop the fiction the Gaza flotilla is motivated by humanitarian concerns. It is not about resolving conflict; its aim is to create conflict.

The fact is, the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is motivated by nothing else other than humanitarian concerns – even if it were not bringing actual aid to the Palestinian people. Just by coming to the Gaza Strip is a form of humanitarian relief. It comes in the form of breaking a psychological barrier as well as a literal one. It shows that there are people all over the world that care about their plight. By breaking the blockade, humanitarian relief comes in the form of being free to trade with whom ever the Palestinian people want without having to go cap in hand to the Israelis. Humanitarian relief is more than just a ship-load of bandages and bags of cement; it’s about freedom and the right to trade without harassment and with any one they wish – including Israelis.

What the neoconservatives and the Zionists need to do is drop the fiction that their aim of blockading the Gaza flotilla is to prevent arms and weapons reaching Hamas. They know full well that there are no arms or weapons on board any of the vessels. The world knows that the Zionists' true aims are not about preventing arms reaching the Palestinians but about creating conflict in order find an excuse to subdue and crush the Palestinian people and stop them from having their own sovereign state which, in turn, will prevent the Zionists from ever realising their ultimate dream of creating a Greater Israel.

The ‘Freedom Flotilla’ is called the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ for a reason. It’s something the neocons and Zionists refuse to understand.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.